Harden My Heart
by MG12CSI16
Summary: It's nights like these that make Molly Hooper wonder how she can simultaneously love and hate Sherlock Holmes.


I'm not entirely sure what to think of this to be honest because it's the first time I've tried string vignettes together and since I'm trying to ease myself back into the world of Sherlolly I decided to start small. I apologize if this is terrible because I think it's a bit obvious that I'm rusty.

I own nothing.

* * *

**Harden My Heart**

It starts with a kiss. It's rough and different than anything she's experienced before. His hand fists itself in her hair, jerking slightly on the ends until her mouth opens in a gasp and his tongue is snaking past her lips and she begins to wonder if this is what falling feels like.

(Maybe one day she'll ask him.)

She doesn't intend for it to go any further but then again she was never good at being a leader. Instead she follows him, drunk on the taste of cigarettes and desperation, and feels her feet shuffle across the hardwood towards the bedroom. She hears the door creak open when he nudges it with his elbow and she instinctively wraps her legs tightly around his waist when he picks her up with arms that are much stronger than they look.

They make love like they've been deprived of human contact for far too long. Touching and kissing and moaning until she can't breathe; fingers in her hair and hips moving against her own and _dammit it's not supposed to be like this._

It was never supposed to be like this.

xxx

She cries when it's over.

Sherlock listens to her through the bathroom door as the shower's stream runs over his body and washes away the sticky feeling of sex. His mind is spinning and his head aches, he can still hear her crying and he imagines her still curled on the bed where he left her and hates himself a little more.

He didn't come here for sex. He really didn't even come here for her really and the thought makes him nauseous because it's not supposed to be like this.

It was never supposed to be like this.

xxx

When he's showered and his mind is no longer clouded he leaves, pretends her doe eyes aren't watching him as he treads past the bed and ignores the sniffling sounds she makes as she holds the sheet over her bare chest. She hears the front door slam and suddenly she's alone again. Her heart beats painfully against her ribcage as she twists the ring on her finger and suddenly the nausea is too strong to ignore.

When her stomach is empty and the tears no longer sting her eyes Molly crawls back to bed, twisting the ring from Tom off her finger before laying it on the bedside table and drifting to sleep.

She's not even surprised when she dreams of Sherlock Holmes.

xxx

It happens again a few weeks later, this time in his bedroom when Mrs. Hudson is out and John is on a date to make up for the one Sherlock crashed during his ill-timed return and she shows up on his doorstep rain soaked and crying and even the great Sherlock Holmes knows the whole thing looks entirely too cliché.

He lets her in anyways.

At first, he's the slightest bit apprehensive around her, surprised she's shown so soon following the aftermath of their last encounter but in the end it melts away as soon as she moans into his mouth and it's not until his finger tips are leaving slow forming bruises on her hips that he begins to comprehend what all of this means.

In the end though, he decides it doesn't even matter.

xxx

It soon turns into something of a cycle, sharing his bed when she can't stand to be near Tom, guilt gnawing at her as she lets him fuck her into the mattress until she finally stops crying and is able to wash the scent of him off her before she goes just as quickly as she came.

He pretends the sound of the door closing behind her doesn't make him feel sick.

xxx

When he starts using again, Molly thinks she's going to lose her mind.

Her hand still stings from where she'd slapped him in the lab, his eyes wide with shock and the remnants of his last high. Her bottom lip is raw, caught between her teeth as the metallic taste of blood washes over her tongue. Her eyes sting from the saltiness of the tears and Sherlock is pacing, agitated movements moving in and out of her peripheral vision as she stares out the window overlooking the street below.

"How could you do it?" she finally asks, voice pinched because she's so close to crying and her throat aches from the tears she shed this morning.

He stops moving, just for a moment, long enough to glance at her although she can't quite see him. He's too far too her left, purposefully out of her sight.

"It was for a case," he finally says but to her it sounds forced, as if he believes it as much as she does (she doesn't believe it at all).

Molly laughs, a bitter tiny huff that forces its way past her lips, fogging the window with its warmth. "You really are a shit liar you know?"

She hears him sigh behind her; can practically picture pale fingers moving through ebony hair before they tug sharply on the ends in frustration. She's waiting for him to say something, anything, but all she gets is silence.

She's not surprised.

"You know, I don't think I can do this anymore. At first, I thought it'd be ok because I love you and I have for a long time, but of course, you knew that didn't you?"

She glances over her shoulder, sees him standing rigid in the middle of the floor. His eyes are blank and she goes on.

"I thought things would end up sorting themselves out; that Tom would see I wasn't as happy as I used to be and that maybe he'd leave and I wouldn't mind all that much because I had you and I just…I thought things would be different."

She vaguely hears Sherlock scoff, can catch a vague reflection in the window and her chest tightens when she sees him sneering at her, eyes cold and cruel.

"You care too much," he tells her, head shaking in what she can only describe as disgust. "All this anguish and pointless thought wasted on an affair _you_ started Molly. It's becoming exhausting."

His breath is hot on her cheek and Molly blinks because she has no idea how he's suddenly so close, lips grazing over the shell of her ear, his voice a cruel whisper that's sends a harsh shiver down her spine. And she wants to look at him, berate him because how _dare_ he place the blame on her shoulders.

She steels herself.

"You wanted it too," she chokes out and when her voice cracks she curses.

But Sherlock doesn't answer, barely pays her any mind as he turns from the window and his thundering footsteps are disappearing down the hall until the only thing she hears is the sharp slam of the bedroom door.

Molly runs the whole way home.

xxx

She calls Tom that night and she tells him everything. Twists the ring that's still on her finger and tells the story through sobs and hiccups until she's almost sure he's hung up. Then she hears his voice break over the line and she knows she's never going to see him again.

In the end, it hurts less than she expects it to and she hates herself a little more.

xxx

Sherlock ends up at Bart's nearly two days later with guilt weighing heavy in his gut because nothing he told her was true and if he wasn't such a coward when it came to the thought of losing Molly Hooper then maybe they could have worked things out.

If only it were ever that easy.

xxx

He doesn't find Molly in the lab, takes it upon himself to search the entire morgue and it's not until he's annoyed nearly all the staff that someone finally snaps, "She's requested time off indefinitely," that he feels going to be sick.

xxx

She doesn't answer his incessant knocking but he knows she's there (he always knows) and it takes nearly five minutes of broken pleas and a threat to climb in through the kitchen window before she finally opens the door.

She's exhausted and her eyes are still red like they were the day she left but she's still beautiful. Sherlock can't think of a time when she hasn't looked beautiful.

(Maybe one day he'll tell her this)

xxx

Inside the flat it's silent and awkward and Sherlock finds himself stumbling over his words, trying so desperately to string together an apology and make sense of his actions that he doesn't even notice the tension building up inside of Molly until she snaps finally snaps at him.

"Enough Sherlock. Please."

Because she's tired and she's done with pretending and lying and she wishes she wasn't in love with Sherlock Holmes but in the darkest part of her mind she knows she's damned to him.

She's always been damned.

xxx

Sherlock feels panic well up inside of him as he listens to her words, fear and desperation painting an ugly picture on his face because he can't let her go because she ties him to this earth and he can't do this alone and _Molly I am an arrogant fool and you count. You always count because that's just the way this works. _

And suddenly he's on the other side of the room, pressing her against the wall and kissing her and she's kissing him back despite the hot wetness of her tears against his cheek and in between her whimpers he can hear,

"I hate you, god I fucking _hate you._"

Sherlock knows this too.

xxx

It doesn't happen like the first time. Or the third or even the last. It's different and it's rough and burns with a foreign intensity but there's an underlying layer of sweetness to it that has her eyes welling up and he's wiping them away with the pad of his thumb as his hips continue grinding against hers. And then she's gasping into his mouth and carving into his back and she hates him and loves him all at the same time and _please don't ever leave Sherlock. _

He isn't going anywhere.


End file.
